I would never have said that abandonment was a concern for me. I never felt like he was going to run away with another woman. I knew that he would always be home in the evenings and on the weekends. But then I realized that there was a different type of abandonment going on.
In my marriage, abandonment came within the home itself. He completely isolated himself constantly. He lost himself in video games and movies for hours on end. This was every evening after work, every weekend, every holiday, every vacation, no matter where we were or who we were with. This happened whether we were alone just the two of us or at social events with our friends and family. It didn’t matter whether we were on the Oregon Coast visiting his own mother, having Christmas activities with my family, or in Paris on a family vacation. This was on the beach, in the hotel rooms, in the restaurants, and even on a beautiful dinner cruise in downtown Paris on the Seine River. He disengaged from our lives. He checked out completely again and again and again!
Our 15-year old son spent three weeks in France. When we picked him up at the airport, we learned that his luggage missed the flight. We had to wait one hour for it to arrive. So we found a quiet corner where we could sit and chat. I was so eager to hear all about his trip, and he was eager to tell us. Within the first five minutes of our son telling us about his excursions, my husband got up, pulled out his phone, and walked away. We didn’t see him for the next 45 minutes. No explanation, no interaction, just abandonment. To this day, he has still never heard about all the exciting things our son did on that trip. This is rejection and abandonment and happened so many times throughout the years.
For a long time, I didn’t recognize it as abandonment. I only thought of people moving out and leaving their families. But he absolutely abandoned us, day after day, over and over. All the while telling me that he would never leave his family and how wonderful of a husband he was. This daily abandonment was incredibly painful and emotionally damaging.